Bismarck's Shakespeare In the Park

Well, as is typical when we move to a new place, we like to scope out what fun things there are for our family to do.  Bismarck has several outdoor swimming pools, a water park, a super slide fun park, a zoo, a science museum, a history museum, and several other "typical" family entertainment enterprises.  It's the less typical stuff; however, that usually more suits our fancy.  Consequently, after doing some research, we found out about Bismarck's Children's Theater, (we attended their performance of Charlotte's Web--probably won't go again unless one of our kids is performing!) Bismarck's Sleepy Hollow Outdoor Theater, (we attended The Sound of Music and will definitely go again) and Bismarck's annual Shakespeare in the Park Production.  We didn't bring the camera along for the first two, but since the girls wanted to enter the children's fairy contest at the Shekespearean festival, we thought it might come in handy. 

 

Upon arrival, we wandered through the various vendors, listened to the period music,

 

had some medieval dancing lessons, and then made our way over to be knighted by the King.

 

Afterwards the kids practiced their fencing,

 

 

 their jousting,

 

and Emma got her face painted.  Then the girls finally got their chance to participate in the Midsummer Night's Dream Contest of the Fairies.  As they paraded across the stage in front of the fairy judges

each girl was greeted by one of the fairies,

 

 

presented with a little gift,

 

and then gathered on the other side of the stage.  Then the fairy judges assembled and chose a winner for the grand fairy contest.  As it would turn out, Emma was chosen for her age bracket.  She was as pleased as could be, albeit a little stage shy when she had to go claim her prize.

Afterwards they photographed the winners for the daily newspaper,

and took some personal shots with the non-winners and their families.

 

Then they did a lovely presentation of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I'm not a huge Shakespeare fan, but it was actually pretty fun.  It reminded me of the good old days of watching Shakespeare in the Park back in Oklahoma.  It was definitely a more small town presentation, but we'll take the culture in any way we can get it.  Besides, anything beats sitting in the apartment and doing more unpacking.  And, as a good friend told me after we arrived, if you just lower your expectations, you're going to love Bismarck!  Well, I'm not too big on lowering expectations, but even so, Bismarck's turning out to be an okay place after all.